TUESDAY, Feb. 28, 2006 (HealthDay News) -- Replacing nerve cells lost to Huntington's disease, a strategy called neural transplant, provided several years of improvement and stability to some Huntington's patients, French researchers report.
The procedure replaces striatal neurons lost to the debilitating illness with striatal neuroblasts and neural precursors obtained from embryos. These transplants grow to form mature replacement cells.
A previous pilot study found that Huntington's patients who received intracerebral neural grafts had improvements in motor skills and cognition two years after the procedure. In this new study, five of the patients from pilot study were assessed annually for up to six years after neural grafting.
Reporting in the Feb. 27 online edition of The Lancet Neurology, the French team say three of the five patients experienced long-term clinical benefits, along with long-lasting focal improvement in brain metabolic activity.
While neuronal transplantation does not offer a cure for Huntington's, it may provide patients with an extended period of improvement and stability, concluded researchers led by Anne-Catherine Bachoud-Levi, of Henri Mondor Hospital, in Paris.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about Huntington's disease.
